So... he had returned to this place.
Noah stood on the surface of a barren, forgotten planet.
A suffocating, pitch-black void stretched in every direction, interrupted only by the distant, brilliant clusters of shining stars.
Enormous gas giants encircled by luminous stellar rings loomed in the sky.
They appeared massive enough that he might reach out and brush his fingertips against their dust trails, yet he knew trillions of light-years of cold vacuum separated them.
Upon the desolate land beneath his feet, a solitary stone monument stood.
It bore no tool marks or traces of artificial creation, appearing instead as a manifestation of the cosmos itself.
He tilted his head, gazing at the infinite aggregate of brilliance suspended above, and a silent message surfaced within his consciousness.
Time has no beginning and no end.
Noah understood the meaning the realm intended to convey.
When his consciousness departed, his projection and the alternate universe it occupied entered a state of absolute stasis relative to him.
Only by crossing the threshold back into that specific dimension would he experience the flowing illusion of time once more.
...
Morning sunlight washed over the labyrinth city of Orario.
In a quiet bedroom, the diligent fox girl opened her eyes to greet the dawn.
Her nimble, golden ears twitched, catching the faint sounds of the awakening city.
Throwing off her woven covers, the young girl sat up and stretched the sleep from her limbs, her fluffy fox tail swishing in a rhythmic arc behind her.
She slipped her feet into her shoes, moved to the washroom to splash water on her face, and picked up her comb.
Standing before the mirror, she tended to her fur with practiced care.
The golden coat felt like spun silk to the touch, gaining a neat, lustrous shine with every pass of the bristles.
After donning her crisp black-and-white maid uniform and tying the apron straps into a neat bow at the small of her back, she set about preparing breakfast.
Humming a soft nameless tune, she placed a pot of soup on the hearth to stew
Leaving the broth to simmer, she opened the main door of the workshop and took up her broom, sweeping the stone path outside.
These chores formed her daily ritual.
Noah had not only saved her from a life of misery but had offered her a warm sanctuary.
In return, she dedicated her heart to his well-being.
A faint noise made the maid's ears perk up.
Her eyes brightened, and a radiant, overflowing smile blossomed across her face as she turned toward the workshop.
A young man stepped out into the morning light, bearing a distinct look of deep fatigue.
"Good morning, Noah-sama."
Faced with Haruhime's cheerful greeting, Noah blinked, his mind taking a moment to process his surroundings as if he were still caught in a lingering dream.
He let out a long heavy yawn, his gaze finally settling on the fox-girl he had not seen in what felt like an eternity.
A gentle smile touched his lips.
"Yeah. Morning."
He was back in Orario!
He got no academy classes to attend today, nor did he need to cook in a panic for Stella—a girl who always acted as though a five-minute delay in a meal might result in her starvation.
Humans were undeniable creatures of habit.
Spending more than two years fighting and living alongside someone guaranteed their quirks would rub off on you.
Shaking off the lingering nostalgia, Noah turned and headed into the workshop's dedicated storeroom.
He sifted through his materials and selected a premium piece of raw coral. Carrying the specimen to the main forge, he placed it inside the heavy iron furnace.
Reaching into his mana reserves, he manipulated the ambient fire element, coaxing the flames to a roaring heat.
"Appraise."
Noah observed the shifting temperature of the coral. The moment its structural plasticity reached the optimal threshold, he extracted the glowing mass with his tongs, transferred it to the steel anvil, and raised his forging hammer.
He struck the material with measured, rhythmic taps.
'My hands have not grown rusty.'
If the inhabitants of the Blazer world witnessed this scene, their fundamental understanding of reality would shatter into pieces.
That world operated on the scientific principles of a late twenty-first-century civilization.
Integrating supernatural abilities into a society governed by strict scientific theory stood as a remarkable achievement.
Superpowers, by their very nature, trampled upon the sacred laws of physics, mocking the conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics.
In that world, science and common sense represented the truth only until magic entered the equation.
Yet, here in his workshop, a piece of organic coral transformed into a dense steel ingot under the kiss of a hammer and flame.
This process went beyond defying science, it took the entire established field of material physics and kicked it off a cliff.
However, in Orario—a sprawling city where literal deities walked the cobblestone streets and granted blessings to mortals—the threshold for what constituted a "miracle" sat incredibly high.
Following a final round of polishing, the dense coral morphed into a smooth, pearl-like spherical gemstone.
This transfiguration would leave any scientist speechless.
"It will do."
Noah ran his thumb over the gem, feeling only a baseline satisfaction regarding the processed material's quality.
If Tsubaki took over the anvil, she would have extracted a superior yield.
He got a long way ahead before reaching true perfection in the craft.
"Noah-sama, breakfast is ready," Haruhime called from the dining area.
Noah set his tools aside and moved to the table.
As he took his seat, a strange sense of physical dissonance washed over him.
In the Blazer dimension, his projected avatar had grown to fourteen years of age, granting him a taller stature and longer limbs.
The current distance between his feet and the floorboards, coupled with the lower angle of his vision, required a conscious mental adjustment.
The heat of the forge had distracted him from noticing the discrepancy earlier.
"This flavor... it brings back memories," Noah murmured, lowering his spoon after tasting the rich fish soup.
The Blazer universe was an iteration of Earth.
It harbored no beast-people, monsters, or mythical creatures. Their livestock and wildlife consisted of ordinary, non-magical species.
The contrast with the diverse flora and fauna of Orario remained staggering.
He focused on the tender cuts of fish floating in his bowl.
Without relying on Truth Seeker to scan the meat, he recognized the ingredient.
The Njord Familia, a prominent commercial faction managing the bustling port city of Melen, monopolized the local fishing industry.
The seafood they hauled from the ocean depths stocked the markets of Orario. This specific fish, harvested from the Melen coast, contained latent medicinal properties capable of reversing melanin precipitation.
Yet, no healer or apothecary in the labyrinth city bothered to utilize it.
Not even the Familias renowned for producing potent elixirs.
Adventurers possessed bodies reinforced by the Falna, making them near-immune to mundane illnesses.
Their superhuman physiques, fueled by nutrient-dense monster meat and magical crops, forged an impenetrable immune system.
If a sickness proved incurable in a magical world like Orario, it operated on a conceptual, causal level.
His thoughts drifted to Alfia, the "Silence" of the legendary Hera Familia.
That woman possessed unparalleled, world-shaking talent, yet a conceptual incurable disease condemned her to an early grave.
Applying the fate theories he learned in the Blazer world, the destiny she carried crushed her beneath its weight.
She belonged to the absolute pinnacle of power under the goddess Hera, and even divine intervention failed to alter her tragic end.
So, what entity held the authority to weave such an unyielding fate?
Having traversed the boundary between universes and received a forged "identity," Noah suspected the world itself harbored a sentient will.
Historical texts claimed the gods created the mortal realm, yet it was the world itself that issued the legendary Three Great Quests to the divine beings.
During his time in the Blazer dimension, the universe assigned him the identity of a fighting arena slave.
Did his original arrival in Orario come attached to a hidden, predetermined mission of its own?